Granddaughter of Tojo still against separate enshrinement

A granddaughter of Hideki Tojo, the prime minister executed as a Class-A war criminal after World War II, reiterated Sunday her opposition to removing her grandfather and other Class-A war criminals from the list of those enshrined at Yasukuni Shrine.

According to Yuko Tojo, an official of the association of families of Japanese soldiers who died in the Pacific War sought consent in 1985 from Tojo’s relatives about a proposal to separate the war criminals from the dead honored at the Shinto shrine.

She said on a Fuji Television news program that the Tojo family rejected the idea and still holds the same view.

“It’s an issue of state and not a problem of a private individual. It’s also not an issue of whether to withdraw enshrinement after a foreign country made a claim,” she said. “It will be tantamount to admitting that the last war was a war of aggression.”